A New Meaning to the Skyline
by Emily-Of-Midgard
Summary: Tally thought that she was never going to fit the Pretty mold, but she did. Unfortunately, five teens born with diseases that still exist from Rusty times never would. And they watch the skyline just like she did, but it has a different meaning for them.


Title: A New Meaning to the Skyline

Summary: Tally thought that she was never going to fit the Pretty mold, but she did. Unfortunately, five teens born with diseases that still exist from Rusty times never would.

Rating: K+

Genera: Angst, Family

Disclaimer: I own nothing but the characters, and I do not mean to cause any offence with this. I don't know anyone with these diseases and am going by descriptions of them.

AN-Ok I wrote this one-shot about the outcasts of the Pretties world: Not the Smokies but the ones who had diseases that still were uncured in the future. Like children with heart defects and Cystic Fibrosis, this plot idea wouldn't leave me alone. There are five teens shown here: Tara, Cecilia, Abner, Margot, and Ross.

~Huntress

* * *

Tara

* * *

Tara awakens to feel like she is suffocating sometimes.

She sleeps in the bunk under Margot and her friend always awakens when Tara starts coughing from the stale air in the bunker. Tara can here Margot trying to calm her down before the Specials come over and scare her more then she already is. Margot has been doing this since Tara joined them at the age of six.

Tara manages to stop her coughing when Basil, the lead Special, runs over and thumps on her back surprisingly softly. This and some other things manage to get Tara's coughing fit under control. Tara flops back down on her bed, the room swimming around her. She can see Margot's pale moon like face hovering above her. Tara tries to smile at her friend but finds she is unable too. Basil looks down at her as worried as a Special in the Center of Genetic Diseases can.

"Her lips are so blue." Margot whispers and Tara lifts a hand with clubbed fingers to look at her nails, which have a blue tinge to them as well.

"She hasn't been this bad in years. I think she needs to go to the hospital." Basil mutters and Tara gasps, but it sounds more like a wheeze. The hospital is full of scary Specials, Tara knows she should have grown out of this fear years ago, but Specials still scared the fifteen year old.

As they remove Tara from the bed, she catches sight of the skyline outside of the window with the blinds seen only by normal Uglies in a hospital, where teens like Margot and Tara see them all the time. The lights of New Pretty town light up and as Tara is pulled away on the stretcher, she smiles quietly to herself. Even if Cystic Fibrosis kept her away from New Pretty Town's sparkles and Joys, she could at least see it from its hospital hidden away in a corner.

* * *

Abner

* * *

Abner awakens partly because of Tara's wheezing but mostly due to his own pain.

Abner sometimes wishes he was born a girl. Why? Because he is what the Special's call a "Bleeder," a hemophiliac, and it only affected boys. Girls could carry it, but only boys were cursed with nonstop pain from blood that could not clot properly, all that pain was caused by a fall down five stairs.

He turns his sweat soaked face towards the wheezing Tara in the next bed. He smiles at her through his pain.

"Hey _chicka, _what brings you here?"

The pale girl from what was once France looked at her sixteen year old boyfriend from Diego (hey, Diego may have been liberal, but there was a limit to its acceptance. Abner was the limit.)

"Abner…" She wheezes out but then begins to hack again. Abner extends a shaking hand, grateful his leg was the hurt part of him this time, not his arm. She takes his hand and they lay there, almost normal little Uglies for a few minutes. He doesn't release his hold on her hand as Basil places an oxygen mask on Tara's blue lips and kisses her hand when she looks terrified. Abner wishes more than anything right then and there that he could sneak out to the skyline of New Pretty Town and steal her something, a necklace to complement her almost Pretty sized eyes. But for a boy like Abner, being tricky could end your life.

* * *

Margot

* * *

Margot lifts a trembling hand to her lips and begins to sob. Tara, her only friend, the leader of the misfits in Bunker Twenty-Five could be dying and Margot couldn't do a thing about it.

For once she ignores her own shortness of breath and stumbled to her feet, trying to follow her friend. A pair of arms wraps around her waist and she is pulled into Ross' large arms.

"You can't follow her Margot."

"The Hell I can't." Margot had been raised in a very odd city, where they still believed in a superhero in the sky and Margot would often pray to her god for a teen from Bunker Twenty Five who had been taken to a hospital. Margot tries to fight her way out of Ross' arms but her pounding heart takes up all her energy and she flops onto Ross' chest.

Margot was in a hopeless situation. Her heart was bad and the fourteen year old's only hope was a heart transplant. Unfortunately for her, healthy Pretties just didn't up and die and the only hearts available were from old Crumblies who's hearts were bad from years of life extension treatments. Still, Margot was the, pardon the pun, heart and soul of the Bunker.

Margot begins to whisper a prayer for Tara, and Abner, and all of them, and begins to wonder if she is selfish for hoping a Pretty would topple from that skyline and meet their demise so she could have a turn.

* * *

Cecilia

* * *

Cecelia awakens to Basil taking Tara away and listens to Margot fall on top of Ross, but she doesn't speak, but listens, judging how bad Tara, the hero of the youngest of the bunker, the seven year old Cecilia, is.

Cecelia turns to the sound of Margot's voice as she prays and moves a hand out, as she cannot see where she is going due to a disease that made her blind as a baby.

"Margot?" she whispers and they, Margot and Ross, stop talking. This scares Cecelia, as she relies on sound mostly.

"Yes, I'm here?"

Ross picks her up in his large, warm arms and she gets why Margot likes the fifteen year old so much.

Ross takes her over to where she assumes the windows are, as she can hear the fireworks from New Pretty Town so much clearer from over here. She lifts out a hand and touches a cold, solid surface, but lacking the smart matter rivets the wall of the bunker has. Yes, these are the windows.

"Margot?"

"Yes."

"What do the fireworks look like?" The Brazilian child asks and she can almost hear the tears in Margot's eyes, almost as clear as the fireworks.

"Oh, Cecil, they are beautiful. The one with the loud boom was bright pink with silver sparkles, and that last one was a gorgeous ruby color with orange starbursts."

Cecelia smiles and rests her head against Ross' chest, listing to the descriptions even though she hasn't the foggiest what ruby and pink look like, even though she knows in her heart they must perfect or they would be here with her instead of out on the skyline.

* * *

Ross

* * *

Ross lays the little girl back down in her bunk and joins Margot on hers. He pulls her into his arms and he is certain if he could love anything more than eating, it's Margot.

Yes, Ross' curse was that he was always hungry. The part of his brain that registered hunger did not work and he was heavily overweight due to this. He would always joke with the others that he would never fit into the mold of a Pretty unless it came in a size extra large.

"She has the most hope of getting out of here you know, Cecilia. If they can figure out a way to reverse the blindness as it wasn't part of her city that caused it, it was a disease."

"Hmm." Ross says.

"I feel like we are playing house sometimes, you know. You are the father, I'm the mother, Cecil is the daughter and Abner and Tara are the grandparents watching over all of us. They have been here so much longer than any of us, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

"I guess you have the most hope after her. You know they are working on a pill to help people like you."

"I won't leave you."

"Don't be silly," Margot said, punching him in the shoulder. "You'll get well and move to New Pretty Town and forget all about old Margot and her bad heart when you're snuggling some pretty dame, is that how they called them in your country?"

"You are my only dame." Ross had to admit if Cecelia was awake, she would have warned Ross of the jealously in Margot's voice, and Ross had to laugh. Margot wrapped herself around him, as if to keep him tethered to her.

"Margot?"

"Hmm?"

"You know I love you right?" Margot's eyes filled with tears and she wrapped her arms more tightly around him, as if to tether him to her, like he could float away and leave her like the Hot Air Balloons floating on the skyline.


End file.
